Why free Education for Dalits? Why not for each and every child atleast till 14 years of age? And that too quality educaion!

Free education for Dalits up to PhD?

Subodh Ghildiyal | TNN

New Delhi: The HRD ministry has asked the Centre to make education free for Dalits up to PhD, in a recommendation from Congress veteran Arjun Singh which can help the party renew its appeal to Dalits but is fraught with serious fiscal repercussions.
While saying that Dalit education in government and aided institutions be free of cost, the ministry has asked the Centre and states to pick up the tab, in an ambitious move which comes at a time when a resurgent BSP is trying to poach on Congress’s dalit constituency even outside Uttar Pradesh.
In another suggestion, the HRD ministry has demanded an annual hike of Rs 65 lakh per district under a key provision of the flagship Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), catering to remedial teaching for SC/ST students.
The twin radical suggestions have been made to a high-profile “committee of ministers on Dalit affairs” headed by Pranab Mukherjee. The committee was formed in the glow of UPA’s surprise victory over NDA, and was part of a raft of pronouncements the coalition made to authenticate its credentials as the champions of inclusive growth — its political riposte to NDA’s “India Shining”.
The Pranab panel was mandated with reviewing all measures for Dalit welfare and suggest upgradation in tune with changed circumstances. The panel, slated to meet on January 24, is to take up reports on six domains but the one on Dalit education could trigger a serious debate, loaded as it is with recommendations of heavy fiscal burden.
The financial implication of free education up to PhD is not clear. It can be daunting, with figures showing there are roughly three crore SC children in schools and several lakh students in graduation and post-graduation courses. Given the premium on education among Dalits and the success of SSA, the numbers are going to grow.
Observers say the costing of education is a difficult task as the fee charged hides the subsidy component, which forms part of education cost. A fee waiver may not find favour with the government as it would push up its subsidy bill besides increasing the actual costs.
The demand for increasing the SSA component from Rs 15 lakh to Rs 80 lakh per district per annum, to provide remedial coaching for SC/ST, would cost an additional Rs 390 crore.
While the two HRD recommendations would probe the government’s intent, with a ‘no’ in the run-up to LS polls having its own political price, the ministry of social justice (MSJ) is pushing for a higher central share in key scholarships for SC students.
The MSJ has demanded disbanding of the concept of “committed liability” for states in pre-matric and postmatric scholarships. A tentative estimate of the present committed liability of 11 states in post-matric scholarship stands at a whopping Rs 1,507 crore. A national figure, sources said, and would be much higher.
‘Committed liability’ is the expenditure incurred on scholarships in the last year of a plan period, which gets shifted as the burden of states from the next year, with Centre bearing only the spend above it.

53% dropout rate between grade 1 to grade 10 in India .... we need to revamp the ***king system big time!

‘List details of steps taken to end dropouts from school’

Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Thursday directed the Maharashtra government to detail measures taken to stem the huge number of children dropping out from schools in the state.
Hearing a petition filed by Indore resident S P Anand for implementing the government policy to make education free for all children below the age of 14, a division bench of Chief Justice Swatanter Kumar and Justice J P Devadhar asked the government to come out with the “true picture as the issue concerns the future of the country—the education of children.’’
Expressing concern at the high rate of dropouts, the Chief Justice remarked, “It is a very serious matter.’’
According to the government’s affidavit 4.28 lakh children had dropped out from school, and the rate of dropouts between Std I and X stood at an alarming 53.3%. The government advocate claimed that the dropout rate had been decreasing as in 1992-93 the levels were 66%, but the HC said that enough was not done.
The affidavit added that most children dropped out due to financial or family problems. The state also informed the court that free education was provided in government-run schools to boys till Std X and to girls up to standard XII. The HC, however, said that records had not been submitted to back that claim.
The court has now asked the state government to file a comprehensive affidavit giving details of the number of new schools established since 2000 and the number of additional institutions that have been provided aid.
Keeping in mind the condition of the girl child, the court directed the state to also submit statistics about female children admitted to schools and how many have dropped out. The affidavit, to be filed in three weeks also should comprise measures required to be taken to prevent children from dropping out of schools once they take admissions or in the least reduce the number of drop outs. TNN

The road ahead...Economic Times - 06/12/2008

CORE CONCERN

EDUCATION ALONE CAN HELP INDIA BECOME A SUPERPOWER

2008 is poised to be another year of high economic growth. As we enter the last quarter of FY 2008 — the fourth consecutive fiscal when India has witnessed over 8% growth — we find India’s manpower shortages aggravate even further. Just as growth has been multi-sectoral, so have the manpower deficiencies.
There is scarcity of skilled manpower in every industry — from good carpenters and plumbers to factory workers, doctors and scientists. The banking industry, which employs 900,000 people, is expected to add 600,000 more over the next three to four years. Similarly, the IT and ITeS industry will need around 850,000 additional skilled manpower by 2010. And, the retail industry will need nearly 2.5 million skilled professionals by 2012.
Not only are jobs within India on the rise, the developed world too is facing manpower shortages, which are expected to rise to 40 million by 2020. This shortfall can be met by India, where both educated unemployment and the number of people joining the workforce are on the rise. In short, the opportunities before India are huge, provided our education sector gears up to take these on.
The good news is that the government is paying heed to this challenge. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is geared towards achieving useful and relevant elementary education for all children by 2010. This movement is showing results. The number of out-of-school children in the 6-14 years age group has dropped from 13.4 million in 2005 to 7.06 million in March-end 2006. Similarly, the Universities Grant Commission has announced a new budget with promising initiatives and better funds for universities.
While these initiatives are welcome, they are unlikely to solve the sheer magnitude of the problem. Manpower shortages are both qualitative and quantitative in nature. The task is a lot bigger.
We need to take a fresh look at the education sector. It’s time we encourage, engage and motivate both not-for-profit and profit-making institutions to set up educational institutions. Whoever wants to contribute to this sector must be encouraged to do so. There is a role for everyone. There is too much to be done.
In 1991, India opened up several sectors to foreign investment. The liberalisation policy unleashed enormous energy in India’s corporate sector. Since then, several Indian companies have gone global and earned a name in the global marketplace.
We need similar type of ‘policy reforms’ in the education sector. Players in this sector must be given the freedom to enter, operate and exit. India needs more universities. While Japan has 4,000 universities for its 127 million people and the US has 3,650 universities for its 301 million, India has only 348 universities for its 1.2 billion people. India can’t afford to lose more time on debates. In Japan, 75% of all higher education institutions are private. We need to pass the Private Universities Bill that has been pending in Parliament since 1995.
India needs ‘curricular reforms’. In today’s world, where technological knowhow is evolving with each day, educational institutions need to be granted the freedom to engage with the industry and change the curricula as and when required. Educational institutions must teach what the industry needs.
And finally, the education sector also needs ‘financial reforms’, especially in higher education. The government should provide scholarships and loans to those who need it the most, and leave academic fee to be determined by market forces. That’s what will make our Educational institutions relevant and self-sustaining. The need of the hour, therefore, is to rapidly implement this three-pronged reform process — policy reforms, curricular reforms and financial reforms.
A knowledge economy like India runs on the back of its educated workforce. Today, our chances of emerging as a super power squarely rest on our education system and how well it responds to meeting domestic and global requirements for talent. It is an opportunity India just cannot afford to lose.

Rajendra S
Pawar
Chairman, NIIT Group

The Business called Education! - Economic Times - 06/01/2008

The education space is buzzing with activity, with various private players venturing out to get a slice of the hugely untapped market

Shreya Biswas

IT’S boom time for the education sector in India as the concept of ‘business of education’ catches on with India Inc. Considered a ‘social responsibility’ all these years till now and plagued by insufficient infrastructure, the Indian education sector has huge room for improvement.
Increasingly, there are companies on the horizon providing e-learning services, tutoring for kids, coaching institutes expanding their ambit to provide mainstream education, setting up schools, entering the B-school segment et al. Companies like Educomp, NIIT, Tutorvista, Zee Integrated Learning System, Career Launcher, Extramarks, an online tutoring portal for kids, Aptech, Time, IMS, skill enhancement company Abacus Learning are all party to this. Another highlight of the change is the public-private partnership model on which much of the growth of this sector is pinned on. It’s the kind of transition that’s sweeping the Indian education system. Gaja Capital’s $8.25 million investment in Career launcher, Helix Investments pumping in $12 or Mahesh Tutorial and SAIF Partners investing $10 in an English training Academy Veta, are all indications to this. Instances like these are plenty.
Sample this. Career launcher, a leading testprep company, plans a major expansion across Asian countries like Singapore, China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan and the US as well as on the home turf. It plans to invest close to Rs 200 crore in the next three-five years for the same. Besides, it will also launch job-oriented courses for emerging sectors like retail and insurance in the beginning of 2008. All this is in sync with the activities triggered in the education space with various private players venturing out to get a slice of the hugely untapped education market, feel experts.
The company also has elaborate plans on school education. Besides, it has also come up with a B-school in the NCR regionSays Sanjay Shivnani, CEO and president, Career launcher: “The boom is just starting. You will see more corporates entering the sector as education becomes highly specialised and gets categorised as an industry.”
Surely this is in sync with the scope. According to a conservative estimate the entire education market could be pegged at Rs 150,000 crore. About 540 mn people are under the age of 26 and at least 10 lakh individuals could be seeking management education. Out of this, 2.5 lakh itself take the common admission test every year. It’s a whole world of opportunity waiting to be tapped.
Not surprising then that companies are rushing to make the most of it, investing huge sums. Educomp, a major education company recently forayed into formal education with the launch of Millennium schools. Millennium Schools will use the Millennium Learning System (MLS), a fully integrated learning delivery system for Schools developed by Educomp. In the next three-four years, there will be 150 millennium schools in the country which will be set up across Indian cities by independent trusts and societies.
Tutorvista, which has been primarily known as a tutoring giant for overseas market, too bets big on its India plans. Starting operations two years back, the company has already raised $15.25mn from PE firms and another $2.5 mn in a strategic investment from Manipal in the last 18 months. In fact, it plans to raise around $50 mn in the next two years to support its foray into various segments of education. Through the recently acquired Edurite-K, it has got into the content business and now plans to set up 30 brick n mortar test centres by April 2008 for 9-12th grade students, besides providing entrance prep services.
Says K Ganesh, CEO & founder, Tutorvista.com; “India can become the education capital of the world and our plans to foray into test prep, vocational education, formal education are all in sync with this trend.”
In the e-learning space too, a subset of the education sector, several companies have been witnessing substantial growth. Also NIIT, a major IT training company, has invested around Rs 150 crore in the last two years itself in creating new offerings for sectors like insurance, banking and others. The spend will average around Rs 60-70 crore in the next two years too.
Another example is Educomp, which is growing at 200% every year, and working with 5,950 government schools to set up learning labs, a virtual classroom and digital library. The success of e-learning has in fact prompted the government to increase spend on IT-aided education to Rs 600 crore from Rs 250 crore last year under the Sarva Shikhsa Abhiyan and ICT@schools schemes This also comes under the ambit of public private partnership that the Indian govt is trying forge to better the entire system. “Private sector participation, PPP model and the supplementary education services like coaching and mentoring will be the biggest growth areas for the sector going forward,” says Educomp CEO Shantanu Prakash.
Only if the efforts to revive the Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) are taken into consideration, results would be immediately visible. The government’s announcement to provide financial support for the upgradation of ITIs through public-private partnership has given a new lease of life to the scheme. A total of 1,396 ITIs have been proposed to be upgraded into centres of excellence in specific trades and skills under PPP. According to CII, companies such as Hero Honda, ITC, L&T, Ashok Leyland, BHEL, Coca Cola, HCL, Wipro, Kirloskar and TATA have already shown interest in adopting ITIs for upgradation.
In the higher learning space though, due to regulations, it has not been possible to extend the services, though experts believe with some flexibility in increasing the number of seats, deciding on the pay packages et al, institutions would be able to plug the gap between demand and supply.

Real life hero - Subodh Bedre - we need laks of his kind.

An engineer with a passion for teaching

Ketan Tanna I TNN

Reshma Shinde from Aptech is busy packing her bags to leave for the US on a prestigious assignment. Nothing out of the ordinary one would say. But Reshma’s story is truly extraordinary.
Just a few years ago, the 20-year-old—a first generation literate in the family—used to attend New Sion Municipal Secondary School near Gandhi market in Sion. No one was very surprised when Reshma had to drop out of school in her final year owing to an economic crisis—she had to take up a job at a PCO to make ends meet. However, she knew it from the very beginning that working at a public phone booth was not what she would do for the rest of her life—she had bigger dreams.
Ambition pushed her ahead and soon she got in touch with Subodh Bedre, an engineer, who besides running his own business, has been volunteering in the municipal school for the last eight years.
Recognising the youngster’s dream to better her life, Bedre helped her join a coaching class so that she could take the Std XII exams. By the time she completed her exams, Reshma wanted to do more. Bedre helped her join Aptech at a concessional rate. She was so good at her work that the institution offered her a job in her second year and now, the girl is preparing to leave for the US.
Incidents like these add a little bit of more happiness to Bedre’s life. He has been quietly teaching maths, science and English to municipal school students as a volunteer with two NGOs—Each One Teach One and S R Charitable Foundation. He is among the handful of dedicated people who have been teaching without a break. For the father of two young boys, teaching children was not new. “Teaching has always been a passion and when I was in college I used to give lessons to neighbourhood children. Later, when I wanted to do more, I approached the Society for Service to Voluntary Agencies (SOSVA) which told me about NGOs who needed volunteers. I was then assigned to start teaching at the school,’’ the 41-year-old engineer said.
Initially, Bedre started with English classes because the immediate requirement was for a Marathi-speaking teacher who knew English. Gradually, he moved on to other subjects and takes classes in Std VII and VIII. Now, he spends around an-hourand-a-half every day at the school. Nearly 20 to 30 students attend his classes besides the regular BMC classes. There are of course other volunteers, most of whom are paid an honorarium. Since Bedre has his own business, he says he does not need to be paid.
Circumstances made him opt for engineering—his father died and the family business needed him. If he had an option, he would have gone into academics but that was not meant to be. Now that he has two small businesses that are doing well and a supportive wife, Bedre says teaching these children is not financially taxing. “However, what is tough is waking up early in the morning. But one gets used to it. Moreover, if I was not teaching the municipal children, I would have wasted those hours sleeping and getting up late,’’ he said.
A sense of loss bogs down Bedre when bright students are forced to give up their studies because their parents need them to work or to get married. “I remember this one girl, Babita, who was brilliant at maths and science. Her mother married her off at an early age and now she doesn’t come to school anymore. Unfortunately, many of these municipal school children have single parents, they are either living with a mother or a father. Some of them live with relatives and cannot but have to drop out of school,’’ he says.
Another thing that troubles Bedre is that many of the children, especially girls, suffer from night blindness. They cannot see clearly even in the late evening because of the condition caused by malnutrition. “And I thought such things happened in the backward areas of our country,’’ he says. “But things have improved somewhat after the BMC launched their mid-day meal scheme.’’
(Subodh Bedre can be contacted on 9324268562)
ketan.tanna@timesgroup.com

GOOD SAMARITAN: Subodh Bendre is a volunteer with two NGOs and has been teaching several subjects at various municipal schools

IIT - Just another Brand?

In a nation obsessed with comparing one's child with the neighbor's child or the child's cousin, its no surprise that education is a big business. From top institutes to local tuitions, all seem to be spinning money on account of a promise - making a child's financial future secure! And thinking of brands in education, whats better than our prestigious IITs and IIMs? But come to think of it, they are just another brand. They have been smart enough to build upon it.

Why are these brands thought of so highly? Well you provide 1500 seats when the demand is more like 1.5 lakh [total applicants] or lets say [15000 strong candidates] - that seems to have been working for such institutes. Yes, they do provide quality education, but it is not something that other institutes can't provide. While IIMs are set for increasing the already high fee[in the range of 2 lacs to 3 lacs per annum across IIMs], thankfully IITs have maintained an affordable fee. Yet this news in TOI comes as a shock.

IIT-JEE cut-offs under scanner

RTI Reveals Bungled Procedure

Manoj Mitta | TNN

New Delhi: How does the IIT-JEE, one of the most respected competitive examinations in the world, determine who makes the cut-off for admission? In response to notices sent by the Central Information Commission (CIC) on an RTI application, the IIT authorities have given conflicting versions, putting the JEE under a cloud.
CIC member O P Kejariwal has threatened to take an “extremely serious’’ view if IIT Kharagpur, which conducted the JEE in 2006, did not disclose by January 15 how it had calculated the cutoff marks in each of three subjects—mathematics, physics and chemistry.
This is the third time CIC has issued a non-compliance notice to IIT Kharagpur, which was found to have given two different versions of the statistical procedure to arrive at the cut-off marks. Worse, neither of those versions was found to tally with the cut-off marks admittedly applied in the 2006 IIT JEE.
The system, in which every year a different IIT conducts the JEE by rotation, is hard pressed to come clean on the procedure for cut-off marks as RTI has put a question mark on the credibility of what is considered to be a global brand. Jan 15 deadline to explain IIT cut-offs
Consider the sequence of events that led to such a pass:
In October 2006, a parent of an unsuccessful candidate filed RTI applications asking for cut-off marks, the procedure for arriving at them and marks of the students above the cut-off marks in the IITJEE held that year.
In December 2006, IIT Kharagpur evasively said there was “no fixed procedure or technique’’ for deciding the cut-off marks.
In May 2007, after holding a hearing on an appeal filed by the aggrieved parent, CIC directed IIT Kharagpur to disclose all information sought under the RTI and issued notice on why a penalty should not be imposed for its failure to do so until then. IIT Kharagpur came up with the first version of the procedure to arrive at the qualifying marks.
In June 2007, CIC issued a non-compliance notice as the stated procedure did not tally with the cut-off marks.
In July 2007, IIT Kharagpur said the information provided by it was correct.
In August 2007, CIC issued a second non-compliance notice. IIT Kharagpur came up with a second version of the procedure for determining the cut-off marks.
In September 2007, CIC closed the case on the basis of the second version.
In October ’07, the appellant asked CIC to reopen the case, saying the second version didn’t tally with the cut-off marks.
On December 7, the CIC directed IIT Kharagpur to comply with its directions “in full’’ by January 15. TNN